Interactive voice response (IVR) refers to a computerized system that allows a user, typically a telephone caller, to select an option from a voice menu or otherwise interface with a computer system. Generally, the system plays pre-recorded voice prompts to which the user responds by either pressing a number on a telephone keypad or speaking to the system.
Voice extensible markup language (“VoiceXML” or “VXML”) is an open standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for IVR applications. An IVR application user interface may be documented in a portion (e.g., a dialog design portion) of a design document (e.g., a Service Design Document or “SDD”). A SDD may include an application summary, application call flows, application specification requirements, and dialog design for an IVR application. The dialog design portion of the SDD may be used to show what the IVR application will do and how it will behave. The dialog design portion may be used to build the IVR application in the form of VXML documents. The VXML documents may include VXML elements that conform to the specifications recommended by W3C.
The dialog design portion of the SDD may be arranged in tables (e.g., in a spreadsheet or in a table provided in a word processing document) that contain VXML element properties. For example, the tables may include the following VXML element properties: (1) a previous dialog state; (2) type of grammar to be activated during the dialog state; (3) prompts to play during transitioning from a previous dialog state; (4) prompts to play during an initial dialog state; (5) “no speech” (nothing spoken) timeout prompts; (6) “no match” (something spoken outside of the grammar) timeout prompts; (7) “help” prompts; and/or (8) a next dialog state.
Conventionally, an IVR designer or programmer manually creates VXML documents for an IVR application from a design document. Generally, this involves the programmer reading the design document and creating VXML documents that implement the dialog design portion of the design document. This may be very time consuming and may cause erroneous dialog design to be input by the programmer in the VXML documents.